Graeme Dunstan

John Birmingham (‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’, October 2010) claims the moral high ground for old journalism as somehow more responsible than the upstarts of WikiLeaks. The falling appeal of old journalism is due to more than new technology. One factor is the cynicism arising from its complicity in promoting this illegal war. Another, its abject failure in contesting the lies that successive governments have propagated about its cause, conduct and progress. Who would you rather believe? A journalist embedded amongst lying politicians, the military, or the Murdoch media? Or a source document in a data dump? Julian Assange is an info-hero of a new breed.